DISCOVERY QUOTES
quotations about discovery
To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery.
EDWARD MILLS PURCELL
Nobel Lecture, "Research in nuclear magnetism", December 11, 1952
All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinkings.
CHARLES H. PARKHURST
The Pattern in the Mount and Other Sermons
Sometimes you need to get lost in order to discover anything.
KATIE KACVINSKY
Awaken
The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, its continents, and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
DANIEL BOORSTIN
attributed, Toolkit for College Success
I envy you. You have the one thing that matters. You have all your discoveries before you.
JOHN FOWLES
The Magus
In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Think on These Things
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Parerga and Paralipomena
A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
address at Milwaukee, Sep. 30, 1859
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
ANDRE GIDE
The Counterfeiters
No more resolutions
No more leading ons
No more cheap discoveries
No "where did we go wrongs"
SILVERSUN PICKUPS
"Sci Fi Lullaby", Pikul
Waiting for a moment that you think won't come
Belief is navigation but you must go on
The heart is like a temple one cannot see
Inside this world's discovery
From the desert to the ocean we'll be following the sun
The journey now, it has just begun
And the heart is like a temple one cannot see
Inside these walls just you and me
SIMPLE MINDS
"Sense of Discovery"
Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found that there has really been very little that was accidental about them. For the most part, these so-called accidents have only been opportunities, carefully improved by genius. The fall of the apple at Newton's feet has often been quoted in proof of the accidental character of some discoveries. But Newton's whole mind had already been devoted for years to the laborious and patient investigation of the subject of gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple falling before his eyes was suddenly apprehended only as genius could apprehend it, and served to flash upon him the brilliant discovery then opening to his sight.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST
"The Captive,", Remembrance of Things Past
Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Invisible Monsters
We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.
JODI PICOULT
Vanishing Acts
It's life that matters, nothing but life--the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
The Idiot
I guess some men were meant to grow cold
They just get lost and make it their discovery
LEO KOTTKE
"Tell Mary", Balance
The greatest discoveries are usually owing to hints given by others whose names are forgot.
ALBAN BUTLER
The Lives of the Fathers